Every actor has to do it." "You'll get mother and me orders to come and see you, won't you ?" "You shall have a box," declared Paul the magnificent.
Thus began a new phase in the career of Paul Kegworthy.

After the first few days of bewilderment on the bare, bleak stage, where oddments of dilapidated furniture served to indicate thrones and staircases and palace doors and mossy banks; where men and women in ordinary costume behaved towards one another in the most ridiculous way and went through unintelligible actions with phantom properties; where the actor-manager would pause in the breath of an impassioned utterance and cry out, "Oh, my God! stop that hammering!" where nothing looked the least bit in the world like the lovely ordered picture he had been accustomed to delight in from the shilling gallery--after the first few days he began to focus this strange world and to suffer its fascination.

And he was proud of the silent part allotted to him, a lazy lute-player in attendance on the great lady, who lounged about on terrace steps in picturesque attitudes.

He was glad that he was not an unimportant member of the crowd of courtiers who came on in a bunch and bowed and nodded and pretended to talk to one another and went off again.

He realized that he would be in sight of the audience all the time.